World
many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over,” he told reporters. So, arms control experts say
it is bitterly ironic that in his first five months as president, several nations that had long ago renounced nuclear weapons — not just American foes, but longstanding allies like South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Saudi Ara- bia, and Germany — are consid- ering building them. Uncertainty breeds prolifera-
tion, said John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser during his first presidential term and now among his fiercest critics. “Proliferation has a multi-
9
COUNTRIES WITH
NUCLEAR BOMBS U.S. U.K. France Russia China India Israel Pakistan North Korea
7
COUNTRIES TALKING
Nervous Allies Ask: Should We Build Our Own Nuclear Bombs?
Nations unsure they can rely on U.S. umbrella, writes Judith Miller.
D
onald j. trump has been obsessed with pre- venting a nuclear war ever since his rise to promi- nence as a brash young real estate developer in New York City.
Back in 1986, he boasted that if President Ronald Reagan
made him a “plenipotentiary ambassador” to the then-Sovi- et Union, he would persuade President Mikhail Gorbachev to abandon nuclear weapons and end the Cold War “within an hour.” During his first presidential term, Trump called nuclear
weapons “the biggest problem in the world,” and vowed to ensure that there would be none “anywhere in the world.” Now in his second term, Trump wants denuclearization
talks not only with Iran, but also with both Russia and China. In February, he said there was “no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so
44 NEWSMAX | JULY 2025
plier effect,” he said. “A coun- try that considers going nuclear prompts others to do so.” “We are on the precipice of a global turn toward nuclear instability,” analysts Debak Das and Rachel Epstein wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Ever since its detonation of America’s first atomic bombs
ABOUT BUILDING NUKES Iran South Korea Japan Egypt Saudi Arabia Germany Ukraine
over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the U.S. has led inter- national efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace”
speech, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon John- son worked hard to persuade nations to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of global nuclear nonproliferation. Signed in 1968 and enacted two years later, the treaty,
which currently includes 191 nations, encourages the devel- opment of peaceful nuclear energy programs in countries that agree not to deploy atomic weapons.
It also authorizes the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) — a branch of the United Nations — to inspect nuclear facilities to verify that countries are honoring their pledges. The persistent U.S. effort under Republican and Demo-
crat presidents has been largely successful. Only nine nations have developed nuclear weapons — the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and more recently, North Korea. Five months into his second term, however, Trump’s statements and actions have shattered the credibility of America’s “extended deterrence”; that is, the longstanding view that allies can rely on America’s nuclear umbrella to shield them, and that America will come to their defense if they are attacked. “The nuclear umbrella is fundamentally based on their
trust in the U.S.,” said Andrew Weber, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Barack Obama, and
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